The Top 5 Coaches in Toronto Maple Leafs History

#3 – Pat Quinn

The Maple Leafs brought a former player in the organization to run the team starting in 1998. They hired a coach with 12 years of experience, Pat Quinn. He succeeded Mike Murphy who had just taken the team to their second sixth-place finish in the division in a row.

The team hadn’t been in the playoffs for three years when Quinn arrived on the scene. His presence changed things. The Leafs not only finished second in the Northeast Division, but progressed all the way to the Conference Finals that year.

Quinn didn’t win the Jack Adams Award that year. It went to Jacques Martin who led the Ottawa Senators to a 103 point season. Quinn and the Leafs had 97 points that year.

While Quinn didn’t win an award, he did get recognized for his success. The Leafs made him the team’s general manager for the following season. He excelled in both roles. Incredibly, Quinn took the Buds to the postseason in six out of the seven years he coached the team.

He also happens to own the best coaching record for the team while it was named “Maple Leafs”. Quinn owned a regular-season points percentage of 59.1 from 574 games. He also owned a winning percentage in the playoffs taking 51.3-percent of the 80 games his teams played.

Propelling Quinn all the way to number three on the list was the consistency that he showed. Incredibly, he had a winning record in all seven of his seasons with the Leafs.

Quinn did win two Jack Adams Awards in his career. His first was with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1980 and other with the Canucks in 1992. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2016 as a builder.